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Wednesday 16 September 2026
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
Site updated on 14 September 2026
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Spindizzy
In its day, one of the best-loved items of sf Terminology. The spindizzy is the Antigravity Invention used to drive flying Cities through the Galaxy at Faster-than-Light speeds in James Blish's Okie series. This was collected as Cities in Flight (omni 1970), though Blish was using the ...
Drennan, Kathryn M
(1956- ) US author, married to J Michael Straczynski, with whom she has collaborated on articles; in her own right, she is the author of Babylon 5: Book 9: To Dream in the City of Sorrows (1997), which novelizes episodes from the television show Babylon 5. [JC]
Starweb
Board and counter Wargame (1976). Flying Buffalo. Designed by Rick Loomis. / Starweb is a Play by Mail (and, more recently, Play by Email) strategy game which, like Stellar Conquest (1974), includes many of the features later seen in 4X Games. Every player begins the game as absolute ruler of a species which ...
Marriott Watson, Henry Crocker
(1839-1901) Australian minister and author, in New Zealand from 1873; his family surname was simply Watson, but both he and his son, H B Marriott Watson, used the fuller name in honour of the distinguished Marriott family, with whom a relationship was claimed; he did, however, write at least once as Henry Crocker. Erchomenon; or, The Republic of Materialism (1879), a ...
Spacesuits and Sixguns
US Online Magazine produced by David L Duggins, Gatesville, Texas. It ran for six issues, Winter (January) 2007 to Fall 2008, though later issues went online rather later than their date suggested. It paid Semiprozine rates. This was an unabashed Retro-Pulp magazine of rip-roaring adventure stories – or at least that was the original idea when the editor conceived the magazine while he was ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...